


lay me down in sheets of linen

by longboyzone



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Dimiclaude Birthday Week (Fire Emblem), Fluff, Hair Braiding, M/M, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Timeskip | Academy Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:48:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25980007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longboyzone/pseuds/longboyzone
Summary: Claude's crush on Dimitri is getting a little hard to bear, if he's being honest with himself. This is made all the more true when Dimitri offers to braid his hair for him.or,dimiclaude birthday week day 3! prompt: braids
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 3
Kudos: 114





	lay me down in sheets of linen

**Author's Note:**

> hi! instead of art, i decided to write another lil fic for day three of dimiclaude birthday week!! (you can keep up with my dmcl week content [here](https://twitter.com/postirrer) !) woohoo!! by now i think ive established that my favorite type of dimiclaude to write is super sappy, super fluffy pre-timeskip stuff. but this time, i went w a claude POV! enjoy!
> 
> the day 3 prompt i used was "braids!"

Claude von Riegan awoke to the peaceful chirping of birds perched just outside his window.

This was, of course, nothing unusual. It had been quite some time since those birds initially found home in the trees next to Claude’ dorm. Claude had long since gotten used to being prodded awake by their daily morning chatter.

What was unusual, however, was the way he was positioned when his eyes blinked open. Most mornings, he found himself lazily sprawled out on his dorm bed, arms and legs flung every which way. But not this time, as he was trapped in place, rather, by some large pressure weighing down on his chest, keeping him glued to the sheets.

Really, this should’ve been more alarming. Claude had survived multiple attempts on his life as a child, many of which occurring when he had been sound asleep. Waking up to a dagger to his throat had taught Claude a keen survival instinct, one that allowed him to be snoozing peacefully one second and choking out a man the next.

But this morning was unique in many ways, Claude supposed. The dagger he kept tucked under his pillow was ignored as he groggily registered just _what_ was keeping him down. An arm, he realized, and a strong one at that, wrapped tightly around his front, with fingers curled gently between his body and the blankets.

Ah. Dimitri.

Claude twisted in Dimitri’s grasp, taking delicate care not to rouse the prince. As Claude tried to sneak a glance at Dimitri, memories of the night prior came flooding back in a gentle, fluid wave.

Memories such as a firm rap upon his door, tearing Claude out of whatever book he’d had his back bent over. Such as the shadows that made a home on Dimitri’s face, and the grim expression he wore as he confessed to Claude his insomnia. Such as the pale wash of moonlight that made Dimitri look like a ghost as he described the nightmare that had rattled him sleepless. Such as the bit of moisture left on Claude’s sleep shirt after he allowed Dimitri to bury his face in his neck and quietly sob. Such as Dimitri finally succumbing to sleep, snoring away blissfully in Claude’s arms.

It was not the first time Dimitri sought solace in Claude at night. Truthfully, nightmares kept them both awake, only Claude could hide it better under the guise of late-night studying. Dimitri was never one for masking his emotions, and that was especially true in the way he’d come to fall apart in the candlelit confines of Claude’s room.

Of course, Claude found comfort in these encounters, too. Though he never shed a tear, there was something so incredible about the feeling of falling asleep either holding someone or being held. He felt safe, like any imaginary assassins or stone-throwing children were kept out and at bay by the shielding bubble of Dimitri’s weight.

Claude turned to fully face Dimitri, his arms still curled to his chest in Dimitri’s embrace. Dimitri's other arm was tucked under his own cheek, and his mouth was subsequently propped partially open. A small thread of careless drool dripped down his chin, and pooled on Claude’s pillow case. Claude would normally be repulsed by this, but the calm, relaxed expression on Dimitri’s face made him feel both relieved and, oddly enough, rather endeared. 

A small smile even made its way onto Claude’s lips as he noticed the faint snores Dimitri breathed, the sound intermingling with the ever-present shrill of the birds outside. The image before Claude was so raw, so unfiltered. Rarely did Dimitri ever drop his “princely” persona. He wore his uptight and perfect nature like a mask, and Claude could say he was finally lucky enough to see what was lying underneath.

Despite it all, Dimitri was a drooling, snoring teenager. He was sleeping in late, he was skipping out on a morning run, and he was in the bed of another student. He was just like everyone else, but he was also _just_ Dimitri. Not Prince Dimitri, not Your Highness, not King Lambert’s son. But Dimitri, plain and simple. Perfect.

Claude huffed out a fond snort before he let his mind run away with even more praises of the blond. He already did that enough, what with the little crush he’d been nursing over these past moons. He could probably lay in bed and just stare until the sun went back down and the birds returned to sleep. But no, that would be incredibly irresponsible, and, to be frank, stupidly creepy. Claude turned away and sat up instead.

After gently prying Dimitri’s bulky arm off his body, Claude stretched his own arms over his head and let out a stifled yawn. Right. Time to get ready, then. The monastery hardly ever waited for Claude and his lingering, and it surely wasn’t about to start now. 

Claude reluctantly got up, bones creaking in the process, and moved to exchange his sleep shirt for the clean yellow top he wore under his uniform coat. Making his body as small as possible, he then swapped his pants and undergarments in record speed. He walked to his desk, and pulled out a hand mirror from one of the several drawers, and lifted it towards his face.

Claude inspected his face in the reflection, fingers trailing over tanned skin and searching for any blemishes. Along his jaw he found the new growth of sparse facial hair, which he had only shaved off about a week prior. He audibly sighed before scrubbing at his face. He had to go to the market today then, to get a new straight razor because the last one had-

“Claude?”

Claude’s head snapped around towards the sudden sound. Dimitri lay turned over in the bed, his head propped higher with his hand and his blue, blue eyes squinting at Claude in the morning light. His hair was mussed by the pillows and stuck upwards from his crown like adorable little flagpoles. Claude smiled.

“Hey, Mitya. Sleep well?”

Dimitri sniffed softly in return, and a teeny grin blossomed upon his lips. He looked bashful, almost embarrassed. “Yes. I’d say that was the best I’d slept in quite some time.”

 _Oh, man_. Claude lightly shook his head and chuckled. This sounded an awful lot like some kind of awkward pillow talk. They were lucky they were in Claude’s room, because if they’d have been adjacent to Sylvain’s, Claude was sure he’d be able to hear the red-head rolling with laughter at their conversation.

“Glad to hear it.”

Claude left it at that and returned to his mirror. He ran his fingers through his bedhead, chocolate locks parting with every quick stroke. Select shoulder-length strands of hair were strewn about his head, and he began to section off that hair to start working on his braid. While doing so, he absent-mindedly searched the surface of his desk for the little gold clasp he used to secure the end of the braid, which he had abandoned last night in the midst of his nightly routine.

“Claude?”

Claude stopped, and turned the mirror to lock eyes with Dimitri through the reflection. He was sitting up fully now, with blankets and sheets pooled around his waist. The prince looked even more sheepish, and a faint blush rose upon his cheeks.

He seemed hesitant. Claude, newly concerned, placed the mirror back atop his desk. 

“Can I…” Dimitri visibly swallowed. “Would you allow me to braid your hair for you?”

Huh. Claude turned around. This was… well. This was new. 

The last time anyone had braided his hair for him had been several years ago, back in Almyra. Claude could still remember the way his mother had weaved her careful fingers through his messy hair, making a beautiful braid out of his wild curls. It occurred to him now that it had been quite some time since he had worn his hair without the twisted thing. To Claude, the hairstyle was the one treasure he was allowed to keep from his home.

Fodlan had shaken all things Almyra out of Claude. It had shredded his patterned clothes, scraped the language from his mouth, and singed all memories of his father and brothers into a fine, sandy dust. It left him a half-empty husk, dressed in a fancy cravat and called a name that never felt quite as good on the tongue as “Khalid” did.

So maybe that is why Claude felt wary. Why his temple began to sweat in the blue, pleading gaze of his most intimate friend.

He felt his voice quiver before he managed a quiet, “S-sure.”

Dimitri’s smile melted into something less forced, more fond, and he then crawled across a sea of blankets to sit on the edge of the bed. Feeling pulled in by Dimitri’s warmth, Claude relented and flopped down right by Dimitri’s side. He turned forward, so Dimitri had better access to the longer parts of his hair.

Facing each other, with only scant inches between them, knees touching, Claude realized just how close he was to Dimitri. In this sole moment, both of them said nothing, only looked at one another, intimacy floating through the air like heavy perfume. It made Claude feel slightly choked. 

He cleared his throat and offered a chunk of his hair to the blond. “You do know how to braid hair, right?”

Dimitri blinked, seemingly snapped out of his flowery reverie. “Oh, yes, yes of course.” He reached up tentatively, and weaved his fingers through Claude’s curls. “Ingrid taught me many years ago, when we were children.”

Claude nodded, and let the deep thrum of Dimitri’s voice lull him into a pleasant stillness. With heavy eyelids, he then gazed at Dimitri, starting with his crossed legs first then gradually moving up to stare at his chest. Clad only in his sleep clothes, Claude could see the broad lines and shapes of Dimitri’s frame, that of which his bulky uniform normally kept hidden. He focused on the rise and fall of Dimitri’s shoulders, which were noticeably quicker than the relaxed, eased flow of Claude’s own breathing.

Dimitri was still nervous, then. Claude could tell that much from his rapid breaths alone, but this was made all the more apparent when Claude looked to the hand in his curly hair. Dimitri was shaking. His fingers danced like a thin leaf caught in a storm. Claude tried to ignore this, for Dimitri’s sake and his own, but the trembling soon escalated to Dimitri’s knuckles tapping lightly on Claude’s cheek.

Claude gently raised his own hand to rest atop Dimitri’s. “Are you okay?” He whispered, daring not to shake off the honey-sweet tranquility of the moment. 

Dimitri’s blue eyes flicked away from Claude’s hair, and into Claude’s own. His lips warped into a thin, wobbly line. “Yes,” he murmured. “I just... things like this can be difficult for me sometimes.” He dropped his hands into his lap. Glancing at Dimitri’s hands reminded Claude of the fact that he rarely saw Dimitri without his steel gauntlets on. 

His hands were pink. Dimitri’s pale white skin already had a rosy undertone, but his hands were more within the color of a half-ripe strawberry than fresh snow. The pinkness spread over his fingers, and collected sparsely in thick, raised scarring that banded each finger like stripes. Dimitri must have noticed Claude’s staring, for he shyly began to wring each hand together, palms pressed over top of the worst portion of the scarring that was colored deep purple, like a plum.

“I told you about the Tragedy, yes?” Dimitri mumbled.

“Yeah,” Claude whispered, concern beginning to draw his brows together like a mountain peak. Dimitri told Claude about what happened when he was fourteen only a few moons ago, on one particular night when he was too troubled by nightmares to sleep in his own room. He told Claude about the burns, the wounds, the scarring… Claude had just never seen it so close until now. He couldn’t seem to look away.

“The fire... it, uh, it left my hands like this. I apologize if they scare you.” Dimitri sighed, turning away slightly to stare at the floor. 

“No, no, don’t say things like that,” Claude suddenly exclaimed, steering Dimitri away from his chasm of self-hatred. “You’re fine, I was just staring, being all rude and stuff. You can go back to braiding my hair, if you still want to.”

Dimitri blinked and faced forward once more. “Alright,” he decided, with barely a sigh, and raised his fingers once more to Claude’s hair. “I’m afraid there isn’t much I can do about the… the shaking. I’ve never been good at working with my hands, and my… the _disfigurements_ surely do not help.” Dimitri spat out that last bit, as if jeering at himself. 

Claude wanted to ask Dimitri why he even offered to braid his hair, if it were a task too difficult to do successfully. But he knew that question to be far too imposing, and Dimitri was already being berated by his own internal insults. That insecure side of Dimitri was like a shadow, always there and hard to fully cover up.

Though, Claude soon figured out why Dimitri was so intent on completing this braid, despite the challenge it caused him. Glancing back at Dimitri, Claude could tell the blond was already allotting nearly all of his focus solely on Claude’s tendrils of hair, his bottom lip lodged between his teeth and his eyes glinting with a deep-rooted, almost animalistic determination. He looked like he did when he trained; eyebrows furrowed with an ambitious intensity, like he was willing to drop just about anything to see his task to fruition.

That made Claude go silent. He inhaled through his nose, and let Dimitri’s devotion sink in like a plant absorbing fresh rainwater. Dimitri _wanted_ to do this. He wanted to braid Claude’s hair. He wanted to entirely for a reason Claude did not outright know, but a reason incredibly intimate nonetheless. Claude’s face began to heat up, and he did everything in his power not to focus on the brush of Dimitri’s trembling fingers on his cheekbone, or the faint warmth that billowed from Dimitri’s nose with each gentle exhale.

The once distracting chattering of birds faded away into a distant hum. All that was left in the world was Claude, Dimitri, and the small braid that was beginning to form under the prince’s doting touch. 

“Thanks,” Claude suddenly chirped, popping whatever rose-colored bubble they were trapped in. “For doing this, I mean,” he added, as an addendum. 

Dimitri only softly smiled, and pinched the end of the braid in his pink fingers. “Of course, Claude. It’s not much, but I wanted to thank you for attending to me last night.”

Claude scooted back, taking his braid from Dimitri’s grasp. He quickly stood up, and reached for the golden clasp laying abandoned on his desk, clipping the end of the braid shut. “It’s no problem, really. You got to finally rest, and I got an excuse to actually step back from my research for once. It’s a win-win," he said, joking tone trying to mask the fluttering of his heart. For good measure, Claude turned to flash Dimitri one of his brightest, fakest smiles yet.

Because, really, on the inside, Claude was panicking. Dimitri was just so, so close and Claude didn’t know much longer he could keep this up. How much longer he could go without kissing Dimitri’s hands, murmuring praises and melting away Dimitri’s insecurities. How much longer he could abstain from leaning in and pressing his lips to Dimitri’s, moving against him like a rolling, rushing tide. How much longer he could avoid catching the prince by the jaw and whispering the truth of his affections into the shell of his ear.

Claude stiffened, swallowed down his thoughts, and reached for the handheld mirror he’d left on the desk. Just for a little longer, he’d have to manage. Shake off his longing and replace it with that ever-casual air he’d gotten so good at putting up. Bask in Dimitri’s glow as long as it kept shining, while staying far enough away to avoid getting burned.

Claude slowly angled the mirror up towards his face, eyeing Dimitri’s work. It was probably the worst braid Claude had ever seen. The braid was incredibly loose, with little strands of hair sticking out from every tiered overlap. Claude delicately fingered the sad thing, trying to make do with what little he had. It was fine, Claude reasoned, because in the end, it was Dimitri, and anything related to Dimitri Claude couldn’t help but like.

“Looks great, Dima.” He grinned, a tinge of warm truth seeping back into his face. Dimitri looked back up at him, sheets still wrapped around his waist and adoration still spilling all over his expression. He looked adorably proud. His blond eyebrows were pulled upwards, and his grin made the apples of his cheeks look round and pink. 

Then the loud toll of the first morning bell shook the room, rattling Claude to his core. He just about jumped straight out of his skin.

“Ah, shiii--oot,” he gasped, darting around his room to collect his uniform coat and his boots. “Oh man, I’m sorry Dimitri, I didn’t realize we slept in so late, I’ll help you get ready, here-”

Dimitri stood up calmly, a smile still on his lips. “It’s okay, Claude. I don’t have class today, remember? The Blue Lions were given the day off.” He then shook the blankets off and searched Claude’s room for his own discarded uniform pieces. “Ah, I can walk you to your classroom, though. You wouldn’t mind, yes?”

Claude chuckled, shaking his head, while he threw on his coat and began buttoning up the front. He smiled as he felt the tension ease off his shoulders, and playfulness creep up his spine instead. “Sure, sure, keep doing all these nice things for me, so I’m forever in your debt. You always call me the schemer, but I can see right through you this time, Your Princeliness.”

Dimitri giggled from across the room. “Whatever you say, Claude.”

Claude heard the birds outside sing sweeter with every tiny huff of laughter that fell from Dimitri's lips. 

-

And the rest of the day continued as usual. A bit of an unconventional start, sure, but Claude certainly wasn’t known for being shakable. Hilda had pointed at his braid and laughed, making a joke in front of the whole Golden Deer class about Claude apparently doing his hair with his eyes closed. Or drunk. Or both. Claude couldn’t exactly remember. 

It hardly mattered, because what he _did_ remember was the seafoam color of Dimitri’s eyes, and the soft, trembling touch of his fingers. 

These next few moons were going to be tough. Especially now that being in a room with Dimitri apparently made Claude feel one blush away from staggering to the infirmary. As long as Dimitri kept asking to do his hair, kept walking him to class, kept holding him while he slept, Claude was sure he'd die from all the silly, heart-racing things that the most unfathomably oblivious prince in history did _to_ him, and _for_ him.

Or maybe, and just maybe, he'd allow himself to get used to it. Let Dimitri in, let him seep right into his caged-up heart. Tell him his secrets, allow Claude to feel a real connection for once in his split-up halfway life.  
Maybe then, Dimitri could be just as comfortable to Claude as the morning songs of the birds living just outside his window.


End file.
